(This happened last summer, but in the excitement of another upcoming Euro trip to Croatia and Russia, I am just now posting this…)                  

 

           The time had come. Punchline and I had waited a year since our summer trips of ’09 to get back on an airplane, ditch the uncharacteristically cloudy California summer, and fly to the land of green landscape, midnight sun, no religion, expensive beers, and beautiful women: Scandinavia.

 

 

Denmark

 

            We arrived in Copenhagen on a Wednesday afternoon, tired and grimy from fourteen hours of flying. We’d each slept no more than two hours on the plane, so after checking into our hotel, we crashed with the intention of waking up around eleven to begin partying on the first of four nights in Denmark’s capital. There would be no wasted nights in Copenhagen, the second biggest party city in Scandinavia behind Stockholm.

            We spent the days in Copenhagen exploring the city with its array of gardens, and we took a boat tour through the canals. The women were so hot that at one point while sitting alone on a bench, I decided to do a study on the next thirty blonde girls (which I assumed to be Danish) between the approximate ages of 18-35 who walked by. Eleven of the thirty were hot, an unbelievable ratio. Since I was sober, I was picky, too. Two friends of mine, Harrison and Axe, had been to Scandinavia and told me “one in every three girls is hot,” but I was highly skeptical and dismissed their absurd claims. Now that I’d seen it for myself, I felt like calling them up and giggling like a circus monkey. Scandinavia is the shit.

            There are many theories on why Scandinavian people are so beautiful. One is that the Vikings were very selective in which women they fucked, only mating with the finest. Another theory is that in the middle decades of the twentieth century the countries incorporated a strict Eugenics program–prevalent mostly in Sweden and Norway–in which the government sterilized the mentally and physically inadequate. Whatever it was, Scandinavians–thought by many to be “some of the happiest people in the world”–had evolved well.

 

            I’d come to Scandinavia expecting a total fuckfest, with chicks flocking to my darker features and California roots. Things didn’t start well. The first two nights were a total bust. We overspent on alcohol, couldn’t find a single bar with people over the age of twenty-one, and got continuously bad recommendations on hotspots. 

            I headed into the third night with a flashback of my disastrous 0-for-129 first week in Australia a year ago. After updating my Facebook status and informing everyone that I’d completely blown it so far, Harrison and Axe suggested I “lose the sleazy weirdness” and just talk to girls normally. I planned on taking their advice as Punchline and I hit up a popular club on the outskirts of town. It was Friday, so we expected a better crowd. To our dismay, the club was still packed with kids. I put it past me for a moment and began talking to girls “normally.” On one girl I used the line, “What are you drinking?” To another I said, “How’s it going?” And lastly, “What’s up?” They all failed. Nothing was working. I was never going to hook up with a single Scandinavian woman at the rate I was going. Punchline and I were out of there by two a.m.

            The night was still young. Lacking options, we had the cab driver take us back to the kid-infested bar area where we could only hope for the best. Then I remembered something Punchline had researched earlier online. Though it’s hard to trust Internet reviews on clubs, at this point we had nothing to lose. Punchline had found a “30-and-up” club called “Nord.” The webpage wasn’t too sparkling so we assumed it probably catered to wrinkly grannies and geriatrics in girdles. Fuck it. “Actually, take us to Nord,” I told the driver.

            Nord was perfect: hot Danish women, awesome music, and people our age. It was listed as “30 and up,” but they only checked IDs if you looked under the age of twenty-four. The majority of the people there looked between 27-35. Punchline and I ordered ten-dollar beers, and I approached the first attractive woman I saw: a 5’11 blonde dressed in all pink, big rack, slim waste, perfect skin–a 9 at least. I’d given up on being normal; I tried it, but it just wasn’t me. I stood in front of her, pointed to her feet, and began, “Are you American?”

            She smiled. “No, why?”

            “I’ve never seen a Danish girl whose toenails were painted blue.”

            Five minutes later we were making out. Her name was Caroline. She was thirty-three and worked at a foster home. She’d come with a busty friend of hers, also a local. This was perfect for Punchline, who I snagged while he was mid-wander, and pointed out her friend to see if she was his type. “Yeah, she’s good,” he confirmed. I introduced the two, and Caroline and I left them behind and made our way to the dance floor. 

            After dancing, buying each other drinks (It’s actually normal for a girl to buy a drink for a guy out there), and making out a lot, it was time to escalate things. “Let’s get out of here,” I told Caroline.

            “Okay, one second.”

            Caroline walked over to her friend, who was cuddling on a couch with Punchline, and spoke in her ear.

 

            Their probable conversation:

 

            Caroline: “Hey, even though the match.com guy may still show, I’m going to go ahead and fuck this guy. Are you going to blow his friend?”

            Friend: “Yes, big time. It’s too bad about your match.com guy. He was a hottie.”

            Caroline: “I know. But this guy will do. Anyways, call me if his friend turns out to be a rapist or something. You know what happened with Wally and his scissors. Be careful.”

            Friend: “I will. Have fun.”

 

            Since Caroline had ridden ten miles to the club on her bike, we’d either have to ditch her bike or find a cab that could accommodate it. The fourth cab we tried had a bike rack. Things were falling into place.

            The only setback with Caroline was that every kiss had a hint of chow mein in it. Whatever. We got naked immediately and had non-smelly sex, except when I kissed her and thought about Sriracha. 

            The next morning, she opened all the windows and walked around her house stark naked while she cleaned up the kitchen and made a fruit plate for breakfast. She lived in some sort of housing community, so at least seven different homes had clear access to viewing her naked body. The sliding glass door to her room was at least eight feet by eight feet in area, so when I fucked her that morning, I sensed a lurking pervert nearby filming us. His video is probably already uploaded onto youjizz.com.

            I left just before noon and took a public bus back to the hotel. I walked into the room anxiously awaiting the details from Punchline’s night. I discovered poor Punchline had to hang around the club and dance and cuddle on the couch for at least an hour and a half after I’d left. He did finally have sex, but it was period-sex, and she was self-conscious about it. After they’d finished, at seven in the morning, she told him, “Now that you’ve tried a Danish woman, you must try a Norwegian woman and a Swedish woman, and then get back to me and tell me who was best.” Deal.

 

            We met with our fifty-person tour–consisting mostly of Australians–the following afternoon. We scanned the room for chicks, and were disappointed to find only two of them were cute, though neither was my type. The fifty of us walked into town for an included dinner, but Punchline and I left early to freshen up and prepare for the night.

            I’ve learned that when it comes to traveling, once you find a quality party spot, you stick with it. Getting cute and adventurous almost always ends in disappointment. When I went to Ibiza a few years ago with Vince and Jett, while walking the beach, a stunning Spanish girl handed us a flier on “The Biggest Club in the World.” Although we’d partied at awesome clubs the two nights before, we decided to give this place a whirl. The flier was right: The club definitely was the biggest club I’d ever seen, but it was also the emptiest. And we were stranded there because it was too far from anywhere else and no cabs lingered outside because they were outside clubs with actual people in them. When it comes to partying, always go with the sure thing.

            Which is why Punchline and I returned to club Nord. The only problem was that our tour bus was leaving for Norway at 7:45 a.m., which meant I’d be sleeping maybe two hours tops. Punchline was exhausted and went home early, but he still had this to say: “Dude, this has to be one of the best clubs I’ve ever been to–the set-up, the music, the girls, just…amazing.” He was right. After he left, I began making out with a homely-looking girl, maybe a 5 at best. I ditched her when she started playing games. “You may as well just stop talking to me, because all I do is kiss,” she told me mid-make-out, among other shit. It was a lie, of course, but settling for her would be like settling for a plate of oysters at a buffet.

            I ventured elsewhere, eventually spotting an attractive thirty-something blonde with a track-runner body. She was standing alone on the stairs above the dance floor. Without hesitation I approached and used my faithful line, “So why are you standing here trying to look all mysterious?” A few sentences later, she was dragging me onto the dance floor. Her name was Anja, and she worked in some sort of business. Ten minutes later we were making out. While making out with her, the homely-looking girl found me and began poking me. Gross. I can understand why girls feel the need to test guys, but when you’re a 5 in a club with 8s, 9s, and 10s, you hold onto any decent-looking guy willing to take the plunge. I grabbed Anja’s hand and led us away from Homely. Unfortunately, we ended up back on the dance floor, where we spent another thirty minutes before leaving to find a bike-rack cab.

            When we arrived at her house, there were stuffed animals and toys all over the place. Her two kids were at their dad’s, so we had the place to ourselves along with her four dogs. While I’m a fan of dogs, I’m definitely NOT a fan of dog chicks. I can’t stand it when women kiss their dogs and let their dogs slobber all over their face. That’s exactly what Anja did…to all four dogs. She kneeled down and made this “Hoo-joo-boo-joo” noise and let the dogs have at it on her face. After she’d finished, her face was all shiny with saliva. “Whoo! They are excited tonight!” she yelled, and then walked into another room, which I hoped was a bathroom full of sinks. I stepped over the toys, let the dogs jump on me for a bit, and went to her room. I was afraid to kiss Anja the rest of the night. When she tried, I’d give her small pecks and then start kissing her chest to avoid the dried dog slobber. Even if she’d washed it off, it was still in my mind. After some foreplay, we fucked boringly in missionary for ten minutes before she let me switch positions. After finishing, I rolled over and drifted off to sleep. In my dreams that night, Dobermans chased me through fields.

 

            I awoke to noises of Anja cleaning up her closet. I popped up instantly. “What time is it!?” I asked hysterically.

            “Um, seven forty.”

            “Fuck! I’m late. I gotta go.” I put on my clubbing clothes–jeans and black-striped shirt–in a flurry, kissed her goodbye, and took her business card (Note: I added her on a Facebook a few days later, and she sent me a message asking me if I wanted to take advantage of a business opportunity. I deleted her the next day. Who does that?). If I missed my bus, I’d have to find my own way to Norway (I still hadn’t even packed yet!). I scampered into the early-morning streets and frantically waved at occupied cabs. It took me close to five minutes to find an empty one. I threw myself across the backseat and told him my hotel name. The drive took an eternity. 
            The bus was parked across the street from the hotel, already crammed with passengers. I paid the cabbie, boarded the bus, ignored the irritated looks flung my way, and scanned for Punchline. He always had his shit together. “Dave!” I heard someone yell. It was Punchline.

            “Oh shit! Is my stuff still up there?”

            “Nah, I got it for you.”

            I sat down. “Whew! Thanks, man. I owe you.”

            “Don’t worry about it. So what happened?”

            After telling him my story, I put my head back and drifted off, still dressed in wrinkled club attire. As it turned out, I wasn’t even the last one to board the bus. Some other moron had overslept worse than me, so I wasn’t the main asshole. Things worked out. I was on my way to Norway.

Norway

 

            Though the most conservative and expensive of the Nordic countries, Norway was by far the most beautiful. Only four percent of the Norwegian land was flat, giving way to the mountainous terrain and world famous Fjords. On the bus ride, I’d gaze out the window for hours at a time and never get bored. The landscape was that stunning.

            Our first stop was Oslo, Norway’s capitol and largest city. Since Sunday was a dud night anywhere in Scandinavia, Punchline and I stayed in and slept. Mondays weren’t much better, but our tour had planned a get-together at a bar in town.

            The reddish bar was in a C-shape, with tables at one end, and a dartboard area at the other. Other than the fifty of us and a handful of dudes, the bar was empty. After a game of King’s Cup, I spotted a lone attractive redhead–the dyed-hair kind–sitting at the end of the bar by herself. Other than the girls on our tour, she was the only girl at the bar. Before I even had a chance to talk to her, a large bald guy who looked like the MMA fighter Fedor approached her. I continued to drink with my tour mates.

            A few drinks later, I was talking with Punchline and a couple girls on the tour, when I turned around and found the redhead standing behind me, trying to get by on her way back from the bathroom. With my back still to her, I turned around and began. “Who are you?” I asked.

            “What?” she asked.

            “Where did you come from?”

            “The bathroom. Where did you come from?”

            “California. I like your hair. Is the technical color maroon or burgundy? I’ve never been able to tell the difference.”

            “What? It’s red,” she affirmed incorrectly. “You’re from California? What are you doing in Oslo?”

            Two things: First, both girls from Copenhagen asked me the same question after finding out I was from California. Scandinavian women have no idea how desirable and attractive they are, which works out perfectly for us travelers. Second, whenever talking to girls, I always try and stealthily bring into light my strengths. I never come out and say it; I find ways of getting them to uncover it. With its surfer culture and Hollywood atmosphere, California is world-renowned as a happening, fun, and beautiful land. So if I didn’t find a way to incorporate this information into the conversation, I was wasting my advantage. Back home, my main advantage is being a teacher. Since teachers are generally considered noble and trustworthy, girls are able find a comfort zone with me much quicker than if I was a businessman or something. Here in Scandinavia, I had both things going for me. 

 

            She led me outside to the smoking porch to get away from the bald guy, who she claimed she was using for free drinks. Her name was Mari, and she worked at a foster care home (another one). I became suspicious when I saw her phone had a picture of a dude on it. “Who is that?” I asked.

            She looked down at her phone and quickly hid it from my view. “Oh, that’s my friend.”

            “You’re not married are you?”

            “No way. I’m only twenty-seven. But I told the Russian guy that I was married in case he got the wrong idea, so you’re gonna be my husband tonight.”

            “Okay, Wifey.”

            I liked her attitude. We returned to the bar to get drinks when the Russian poked his head in and began talking in Mari’s ear. “Hey! I want you to meet my husband,” she almost yelled.

            The guy clearly sniffed out the lie. Suddenly I feared for my safety as this giant man with sinister wrinkles in his face glared down at me. “Hey,” I muttered. He spoke in her ear briefly and then stuck out his hand. I hesitated a moment, shook it, and he left.

            “How many drinks did that guy buy you, Wifey?”

            “Like three, but whatever, he’s gone.” She stroked her hair. “So, Hubby, are you going to make love to me tonight?”

            “Of course, Honey, I love you.”

            “I love you too.” She got up, gave me a kiss, and went to the bathroom.

            Shortly after she returned, I asked if we could go back to her place for “a beer.” She rejected the idea–something about her fussy roommate. Instead she suggested the following: “Let’s go check out underneath the pier.” There comes a moment in every one-night-stand when you can safely grab a girl by the hand and lead her out without resistance. Often times this window is disguised in the form of “Buy me another drink” or “My friends are talking to some guys” or a pouty face or a swift cock grab. In this case, Mari had made the let’s-fuck signal loud and clear. I smiled, grabbed her hand, and led her outside.

            There was no pier. We walked towards the water to some bench on a hill overlooking the harbor. “I love you, Hubby,” she told me.

            “I love you too, Wifey,” I lied.

            She took off her panties as I undressed and slipped the condom on. She then began uncomfortably riding me on the rickety bench. I couldn’t even get my dick all the way in while she awkwardly bounced. “Let’s try someplace else, Love,” I said.

            She hopped off. “Good idea.”

            We had few options. Down below were boats, and on the hill was a construction zone for what appeared to be a stone fortress, tractors and bulldozers everywhere. We walked in the direction of the tractors, settling for a semi-grassy area between a tractor and bulldozer. She lay on her back while I began muddily fucking her missionary. After five minutes of this I turned her over for doggie. Her naked back was caked in mud. I was able to keep my hard-on, however, and not think of poop, as I grabbed hold of her still white ass and began plowing.

            With my pants down just below the balls, and my pant-covered knees digging sickeningly into the mud, we had to try something else. We stood up, and I bent her over the tractor and fucked her from behind, a prime example of John Deere’s finest. This was by far the best position given the quagmire that surrounded us. But we got bored of it after a while, so we found a grassier area by a tree and I let her get on top. With no tractors to protect us, we were now completely exposed to the main road some hundred feet down, but I doubted anyone would be wandering the Oslo streets at three a.m. on a Monday night.

            Suddenly light was everywhere. I saw Mari’s bouncing boobs with creamy clarity. I looked right and saw a police van a couple hundred feet away blaring a spotlight in our direction. “Fuck! The cops!” I yelled. Mari jumped up and hid behind a tree. Still in the cops’ sight, I pulled up my pants and buckled up. It didn’t matter; the light turned off and the perverted cops drove on.

            Now in the clear, we finished, got dressed, and said our goodbyes/divorces. Just before her muddy ass left, we had the following exchange:

 

            Her: “I’m so glad I didn’t fuck that Russian guy.”

            Me: “What? You were going to fuck that guy?”

            Her: “Until you came along, maybe.”

            Me: “I thought you were just using him for drinks?”

            Her: “If you must know; I had to get fucked tonight.”

 

            Great–I beat out a creepy old man to get in the pants of a Scandinavian trashbag who let me fuck her on a tractor. I need a girlfriend.

 

            As I searched for a cab, my body felt disgusting, and the knee/thigh part of my pants were so brown it looked like I had pads on. Thinking back, that had to be the worst sex of my life. Anyone who actually enjoys sex in public or exhibitionism (or whatever it’s called) is a complete idiot. You end up rolling around in the mud like pigs.

 

            The next morning we headed north to a small town called Voss, famous for their water. Idiotic celebrities pay extra for “Voss drinking water,” while I was drinking it out of the bathroom faucet. Two simple yet awesome things about Scandinavia was that all the tap water was clean (Anyone who paid for water was an idiot, though sadly I did this twice because I’m stupid; and both times I accidentally bought sparkling water, which is so awful it should be given to poor countries along with those Super Bowl shirts of the team that didn’t win); and second, all the hotels had free Wi-Fi, and since I’d brought my laptop, when I got horny I could take my laptop into the bathroom and rub one out in peace while Punchline chilled unsuspectingly on his bed. 

            The northern Norwegian cities were small, and since we were there Tuesday through Thursday, there was absolutely no nightlife. We came this north for the scenery and activities. One day we went white water rafting through the Stranda River. Another day while traveling through Lillehammer–home of the 1994 Winter Olympics (Tonya Harding)–we bobsledded down an actual run. The bobsled had wheels, however, so our sixty-five mph was only about eighty percent the speed of a real bobsled. Either way, I have a newfound respect for Bobsledders, especially Jamaicans. Those things are fucking scary. The last day we took a cruise through the Fjords, Europe’s version of the Grand Canyon, only painted with color. Unlike the Grand Canyon, the Fjords were surrounded by steep sides–not rocks and crap–carved by massive glaciers during the Ice Age and beyond. Unbelievable.

            We departed early Friday to make our way south. We ended up at a small Norwegian city called Gjovic. It was a Friday, so I was expecting big things. There was a club one block from our hotel that was supposedly the best club in the town. Punchline and I pre-partied in our room to save money. Compared to America, alcohol cost double in Scandinavia, but in Norway it was close to triple. One hotel sold tap beers for fourteen bucks! No wonder I didn’t see any bums in Norway.

            At this point in the trip, Punchline and one of the cute Italian-looking tour girls, Danica, were beginning to get lovey-dovey. They hadn’t hooked up yet (though from the looks of things, Danica wanted to fuck Punchline’s brains out); they held hands all the time and cuddled in the back seat. It was quite cute. Punchline ensured me that Danica wasn’t going to get in the way of him hitting on slutty locals. We’d see about that.

            After several 0-fers, I began talking to a punky-looking lass with a tongue ring and blonde hair that was shaved on one side. Because I find asymmetric hairstyles attractive, I was drawn to her. I knew things were headed in the right direction when I found out she worked at a foster care home. This was getting so scary that I almost slipped and told her about the other girls. Instead I used my California mumbo jumbo, and we ended up on the dance floor, and eventually back at her place for wild sex. She was fun, normal, and conflict-free, so there really is nothing worth noting except that her fat roommate had passed out in the living room and left the same damn trance/techno/house (I can never tell the difference) song playing on repeat at full blast. Closing her bedroom door didn’t do much to muffle the noise. I actually liked that song too, but I grew sick of it after the fifteenth repetition. (I’d tell you which song it was, but I don’t know the names of any House songs, and I don’t know how to write the beat–here, I’ll try: Dee Dee Doo Doo, Dee-Da-Dee-Dee-Dee-Dee-Dee-Dee-Doo-Doo. Hope that helps.)

            Meanwhile, back at the club, Punchline was making out all over the place with Danica. Boredom set in after a while, so during one of Danica’s bathroom breaks, Punchline wandered near the exit and saw one of the guys on our tour outside talking with two scantily clad Norwegian girls next to a pizza joint. Punchline decided to ditch Danica–and guaranteed sex–to join the trio. He ended up getting one of the girl’s Facebook info–giving her more incentive to post whorish pics to impress strangers–in addition to two tasty slices of pizza. Then he went home and crashed. He had this to say the next day: “Eh, I decided pizza was more important than Danica.” On to Sweden. 

 

 

Sweden

 

            The first three nights in Stockholm were far from extraordinary. It didn’t help that we’d arrived just in time for Gay Pride Week (There were rainbow flags at every corner; even buses had them). Saturday we were too fatigued to enjoy the night and ended up in bed by two, a major disappointment for a Saturday night in Scandinavia’s party capitol. Sunday we stayed in and searched for hotel options since our tour was over. Monday was an 0-fer night.

            Our stay in Sweden really began Tuesday. Punchline found a deal on travelocity in which we got double rooms for the price of one. In other words, we each got our own kitchen sized twin-bed room, and they were next door to each other. This was good because now when I brought a girl home, I didn’t have to worry about anything. But it was bad because when I got bored I over-masturbated and wasted way too much time. Another great thing about the hotel was that it was one block from a Mexican restaurant and a ten-minute walk to the bars and clubs. Perfection.

            That night we walked to the club/bar area and found that none of the clubs were open, just a handful of bars. We glimpsed in each bar and didn’t see too much talent. We settled on a squarish outdoor bar that was only open three months out of the year–the other nine months it was too cold to function. After a couple beers, things were looking glum until Punchline began talking to a hottie who’d come to the bar alone. She was  Punchline’s essential type–blonde hair, blue eyes, slightly curvy, giant rack.

            I left them and wandered off on my own to find couples and chicks that had already been snagged by guys. I downed a couple more beers, scanned the bar one last time, and left. Just as I was about to head back to the hotel, I heard a chorus of laughter coming from another bar. I had to give it a shot.

            I found what I was looking for: an attractive 42-year-old Swedish ex-soccer player lingering around a handful of loose friends. I approached the blonde mom and used my default line, “Who are you?” I wasn’t expecting much, but she bought us wine, and after some help from one of her friends who told her to “go for it,” (I’ve learned any time a chick’s friend encourages her to go home with a guy, it means that she hasn’t had sex in over six months) we were walking back to my hotel.

            Everything was going well. I fucked her twice with only a five-minute rest in between sessions. I’d worked hard, so when I finished I wanted nothing more than to pass out in peace. That didn’t happen.

            “I want you to tell me a story,” she begged as I lay facing the opposite direction.

            “What? A story? C’mon, we’ve had a long night; let’s get some rest so we can have sex again in the morning.”

            She persisted. “No! Tell me a story!”

            My eyes were starting to close. “Let’s go to sleep.”

            She stopped for a minute. Then, just as I’d begun sleeping, she started up again. “Come on! Tell me a story!”

            “No. I’m tired. We must sleep.”

            “NO! Tell me a story! Now!”

            I nearly snapped. I was snoozing in peace until this “42-year-old” decided to act like a kindergartner after snack time. It wasn’t in me to release a thunderous fart and point to the door. Instead I was nice.

            “Okay, fine,” I began. “Once there was this guy…and…and he went to sleep.”

            She shook me. “No! No! No! Tell me a real story!”

            “Sorry, sweetie, that’s all I got.” I sensed her give up, and I heard her turn over violently and sigh in annoyance as I passed out. I could understand how things with that third husband went badly.

            A couple hours later, I was awakened to her kissing me and telling me she was leaving. “Bye,” I told her in my daze. Then I turned the other way and slept another seven hours. I’m assuming on her way home she stopped at the movie store and picked up The Princess Bride to fulfill the void left by me.

 

            Punchline knocked on my door around noon just as I was waking up. I anxiously awaited his story. If he passed up sex for a burrito, I was going to kick him out of Sweden. “Yeah, she wanted it bad, so I gave it to her good,” he told me, then added, “Man, I’ve never seen a girl rub her clit that hard.” Punchline was back. Amazingly, our night went from a total bust, to a wall-to-wall to fuckfest. Never underestimate the passion of a traveler.

            The next night we went to an outdoor club, where (no joke) seven out of every ten girls were gorgeous. Only problem was that the club was all college kids on vacation, and we went 0 for everything.

            By the end of Thursday, we’d already done all the tourist stuff–we walked the bustling shopping streets, saw some monuments and museums, and took a ferry through the Baltic and Lake Malaren. Now all there was to do was eat Mexican food during the day, walk the streets for a bit, buy pre-party booze from the alcohol store (The Swedish government has strict rules on alcohol so that only a certain chain of stores can sell it), and then wait for the night.

            After the college-chick tease from the night before, we were motivated to find a 30-and-up club. Punchline did some research online in hopes of Copenhagen-like success, but he found nothing. On a fluke Facebook conversation with my buddy Jason, he asked one of his Swedish friends, who happened to be online, for a club with an older crowd. “Golden Hits” she told him. And that’s where we went.

            With its red carpeting and karaoke culture, Golden Hits reminded me of an old town Vegas casino. It even had a blackjack table downstairs near the bathrooms. Since it was Thursday, however, the bar was loosely packed with a late-thirties crowd, few of which were cute. We double-fisted beers and hoped for the best.

            Midway through my second beer I began talking to a short forty-year-old blonde with hair extensions and heavy eye make-up. Before I even knew what hit me, she forced me to dance with her. After an hour of grinding to eighties hits with an occasional techno song, I realized that I was homosexual, and that Punchline was nowhere to be found. I assumed he moved on to another bar. Like me, when Punchline gets drunk he wanders.

            Her name was Kate, and she claimed she worked as an escort, which was the biggest load of shit I’d heard all trip. One, she was too old. Two, her and her cigarette-worn body wasn’t hot enough (she was a 6.5 tops). I didn’t ask questions, however, and let her cling to her lies.

            We ended up back in my room where I flopped on my bed while she stood awkwardly. She requested I open my laptop and play the Eminem song “Love The Way You Lie” on repeat so we could dance to it.

            “We can’t dance in here.” I told her as I lay on my back, hands behind my pillow.

            “Yes, we can. Get up.”

            My suitcase and clothes were strewn all over my floor so there was no room for anything except maybe a slow dance. Also, after developing a mild case of musical claustrophobia with the punker chick and her fat roommate, there was no way she was blasting any song on repeat.

            I got up nonetheless to show her how hopeless her aspirations were. We slow-danced pathetically to Eminem. I had to end it, so I told her I had to go to the bathroom. When I walked back in, the song had started over and Kate was dancing with herself, eyes closed, head lolling. I quietly sneaked onto my bed before she had a chance to snag me. “Kate, come lay with me.”

            She slowly opened her eyes and sat down. I pulled her in for a kiss, but before I could escalate things, I had to turn off the song. I got up and closed my laptop with the excuse, “The battery’s almost dead.” Luckily, she didn’t see the charger sitting right next to it.

            I returned to bed to make more fruitless efforts. I laid her down and got on top of her, but she was hopeless. She wouldn’t take any clothes off and actually said, “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen a boy’s privates in a year.” She sat up.

            “What!?! That needs to end.”

            I unbuckled my pants and waited for her to tell me to stop, but she never did. I whipped my lifeless dick out and let it flop sideways. She stared at it depressingly. I grabbed her hand and placed it on my beef stick, but it was like playing with a blow-up doll. I zipped up.

            “Can we turn the music back on?”

            “No. My battery’s dead.”

            She lay back down. We made out some more, but it was going nowhere. Every attempt I made at touching her was thwarted. She wrote down her phone number and as a goodbye said, “I really hope you call me tomorrow.” She left.

 

            The next day I knocked on Punchline’s door around one. It seemed every morning our wake-up knocks to each other were getting later and later. At this point, we’d been drinking so furiously for three weeks straight that we stopped getting hungover. And our tolerance was so high we were downing our drinks in five sips.

            Punchline said he tried a couple other bars but hadn’t had any luck. Things would have to change that Friday, only they didn’t. We ended up back at Golden Hits for round two. The place had strangely expanded with two additional levels that weren’t accessible the previous night. It was crawling with cougars.
            Before I even had a chance to hit on chicks, I ran into Kate. “I called you,” I lied. 
            “No, you didn’t.”
            “I did, but I think I dialed an extra digit or something because everything started beeping and I thought I’d called aliens. So I hung up.”

            “Huh?”

            I had a decision to make. This was a Friday, so younger (by younger, I mean 30-35), hotter women were out looking for sex with sleazebags like me. If I stayed and talked to Kate, I’d be forfeiting that adventure for a 50-50 chance at sex. If I’d closed the deal the night before, it’d be a no-brainer: I’d say hi to Kate, talk politely for five minutes about how her day went escorting imaginary celebrities, and then I’d move on. But I hadn’t closed the deal, so my caveman instincts felt obligated to take another stab at it.

            While Kate ordered us drinks, Punchline approached me and said, “Dude, ditch that chick. You gotta see upstairs. Fake boobs everywhere.” Giving into temptations, I accepted Kate’s drink and told her I’d see her back on the dance floor in a few. I followed Punchline upstairs.

            I stayed upstairs for a short while, but after striking out with three floozies, I decided to throw in the towel and return to Kate. She had all kinds of excuses, however. Listen to this one: “I can’t go home with you because I need to escort a guy at a boat party tonight.” What a liar. So she paid the twenty-dollar entrance fee here knowing she’d have to leave in an hour? I couldn’t decide whether she was trying to impress me or shun me. In the end, I concluded she’d stepped on a rake when she was little and it smacked her in the head, which caused her to imagine things like the guy in A Beautiful Mind.

            After a few more minutes of mindless banter she had a feel-sorry-for-me look on her face. I took it as a sign and grabbed her hand and led us out of there. When we got outside, she stopped me and gave me two conditions: One, we had to get food. Two, she refused to go to my hotel again–her place only. I accepted.

            We found a Burger King a few blocks down, and she ordered a Whopper. She felt the need to impress me with her eating skills, so I watched in hilarity as she did a full hair whip with every bite. I’m sorry, girls, but there is no sexy way to eat a burger. Those Carl’s Jr. commercials aren’t provocative and make all their models look like sloths.

            I couldn’t watch anymore. After scanning for objects in the store to distract me (At one point I read half the menu to myself), we cabbed it back to her place to find out one of her dogs had taken a shit on her living room carpet. Fuck that. I grabbed a beer from her fridge and waited on her bed while she cleaned up.

            It took a ton of neck kissing, but I finally got her horny enough to where she let me fuck her. Not surprisingly, the whole room began stinking of fish. I breathed through my mouth and finished as fast as I could. Even though a fan was already on at max power, I told her it was too hot and had her open the window to air out the room. I’m used to bad smells, but a Ninja Turtle couldn’t sleep through this. The stench eventually left the room like a defeated poltergeist, and I passed out.

            
            The next morning started off horrifically. Kate wasn’t in the room, which was good, but a smell still lingered. Then I found out why. When I went to take a leak, her toilet had a medium-sized turd in it accompanied by two wipes. I thought of flushing it, but forgetting to flush one’s dumps is unacceptable. She needed to learn (unless she left it on purpose as a sneaky tactic to get me to leave, which would’ve made her cooler). I peed on top of Kate’s hair-whipping burger excrements, didn’t flush, and hurried back to her room to get dressed. I had to get out of there.

            Kate walked back in. “You’re leaving?”

            “Yeah, I need to go to my hotel and pack.”

            “I thought you didn’t leave ‘til Sunday?”

            “Nope,” I lied. “The airline let us take an earlier flight. It leaves tonight.”

            “Oh. Okay.” She handed me a notepad and pen. “Here, write down your Facebook info.”

            I took a frustrating twenty-dollar cab ride back to the hotel and went straight for the shower. Fish. I still smelled fish.

            Punchline and I went out the next night, our final night, but it was an 0-fer night, and the only chick who took an interest in us was a hag with a shaved head. We savored our last few sips of Scandinavian nightlife, and headed back with a long day ahead of us.

            The next thirty hours sucked. After a gruesome blend of no sleep, nine-hour layovers, and shitty movies, we returned to LAX to a life of alarm clocks and deadlines.

 

            And here I sit, almost a week removed from my travels. My body still feels like shit, I’m tired, and I can’t even remember the last time I ate a carrot. I gaze out my window at the blue August sky of California and feel a rush of nostalgia. Now in the twilight of my twenties, I can still feel the tingles of those special moments–table-dancing in Mykonos, skydiving over Gold Coast, Australia, the long drive in the Florida Keys, the first set of topless breasts I saw at that Spanish beach (and the chubby bunny that came with it), the bike ride through the Munich rain, the smiles of Punchline, ODR, Axe, Vince, Jett, KG, Baba, O-Dog, and all the people with whom I traveled. I can still see it. I can still feel it. In my memories, our ghosts live on.